IGNPS2: Are people getting any compensation for helping others or is it just because they want to do it?

Keiki Usui: Well, we are planning something about this. We will announce it maybe in a couple weeks. Maybe the next patch will contain something for those who teach other players.

IGNPS2: Are people staying on one server or are they moving around?

Keiki Usui: Not many players [move around]. They are sticking to one world. The average players have two to three characters per world. They don't change servers.

IGNPS2: So is everything separate from server to server?

Yasu Kurosawa: In other games people can have characters on different servers. One of the features that we have in FFXI is sending items, like FedEx. Our shipment feature is very well received and people tend to create different characters in different locations and purchase something and send it to another character. So creating another character in another server is beneficial for this.

IGNPS2: So people are running two to three characters on average, but what is the maximum that you've seen?

Yasu Kurosawa: The biggest is 16, that's the maximum per account. Some people create characters just to reserve the name or for storage.

IGNPS2: How many people are playing online right now?

Yasu Kurosawa: We have over a million characters and 500,000 accounts. We'll be seeing a lot more in the next couple of months. We're seeing a lot of different people. People who have never played an MMORPG before. We designed it in a way so that those people can also enjoy the game.

IGNPS2: What are the biggest barriers for people who haven't played MMORPGs before?

Yasu Kurosawa: Once you log in, they don't know what to do. Final Fantasy will usually greet people with a storyline and cutscenes and then they're motivated to do the next thing. We incorporated that into this game also. We greet them with a cutscene. The major people, including the high-level people will come up and tell the user what the world is like and give you a real easy quest. Then people who have never done and MMORPG can do that and then figure out that there are other people around you that you can ask for help and also party up with.

IGNPS2: Right now we see different companies entering the MMORPG genre such as Blizzard with their World of Warcraft for PC. What are you emphasizing for the flavor of the Final Fantasy series?

Yasu Kurosawa: The same feel that we've been bringing to the users with the previous games in the series. The whole storyline to enjoy, the characters, the magic, the spells, the Chocobo. We have small quests and also missions to follow for people in your nation. As you help out with an adventure for your nation you find out what's going on in the world of Vana'diel right now. That's the way the storyline progresses and each expansion pack is the next chapter in the storyline.